Getting into the minds of your characters?

Most every story is told from a character's point of view (POV). The character could be (in spanking fiction) the spanker, the spankee or a witness. It could be 3rd person or 1st person, but someone will "own" the scene and what the reader should get is that person's thoughts, emotions, physical sensations. Thus the reader will always be in someone's head as the scene unfolds around them. Some writers do this better than others. Things to avoid are "head hopping" -- abrupt POV shifts and vagueness as to who is thinking what.
When it comes to emotional build up, really feeling what is in someone's head, one of the best stories I can remember is called "Report Card Day." It's about a day in the life of a schoolgirl who is getting a bad report card and she knows it. It's written in the 1st person and the author mixes tenses, past and present, to give it a sense of immediacy. It's very effective. The reader feels the noose tightening as the day wears on and she comes closer and closer to her rendezvous with fate. Unfortunately the story is not in the library. Message me for a link.

There are (at least) two very interesting questions here, and I'll make an attempt at both.

The first is how to get started writing. I know how impossible it may seem. As many others, I dreamed vaguely about writing when I was young, but soon got involved in other things and more or less forgot about it. The few times I looked back, I was glad to have escaped - I just didn't seem to have anything to write about! Then seven or eight years ago I wrote a spanking story to amuse and distract myself in a dire situation. I looked at it, found it reasonably good, and went back to my ordinary life. Soon I started thinking about another old fantasy that seemed to be story material, and suddenly I had two stories. Then I thought my first story deserved a sequel, and off I was. What had happened? I suddenly seemed to see story material everywhere - not necessarily full stories, but small things I could use to get them started or give them depth. I guess the moral is that you only see what you are looking for - as long as I wasn't thinking about stories, I didn't get any ideas, but once I started thinking about writing, there were ideas everywhere. So the advice is: Get started! Take an old favorite fantasy and see what you can do with it. Look for things that can give it depth and substance. Imagine how it would feel to be in the situation you have put your characters in. Just by having started writing, you have put your mind in a state were ideas are much more likely to arrive. But don't push too hard. Take breaks when you don't make any progress - your unconscious often works much better when you think of something else.

The second question is how to get into the minds of your characters. There must be many ways, but personally I seem to rely on two main strategies according to what kind of story I am writing. One kind of story is what one might call a pure spanking story where the phenomenon of spanking itself is in the center. I have started such stories from questions like: "What does it feel like to be sent to bed in the middle of the day after a spanking?" "What does it feel like to see your sister getting spanked when you are next in line?" "What does it feel like to be spanked at another house?" The plots and the characters in such stories are not very original, but I think that is part of the game - such stories are about the TYPICAL, and they should be recognizable rather than surprising. The author's prime concern in such stories is to make the reader feel the experience - to make the small observations and remarks that make the reader think: "That must be how it is!"

A harder kind of story to write are those which start with a character and/or a setting, and where to begin with there is no spanking in sight. In this kind of story much more depends on the plot and the character development - these stories are not about the typical but about the unique. I often take the characters in these stories from people I have met, often combining several persons in one character and adding a dash of imagination. Often it is a kind of "what would have happened if.."-game that gets the imagination started.

There are, of course, many other kinds of stories, e.g. stories defined by a clever twist at the end. As I don't write that kind of stories, I'll leave them to the specialists

PattyGolden
Many authors here might disagree with me but my advice to you is to go out and either spank someone or get yourself spanked. Then think about the experience, and finally.....write about it as honestly as you can....even if you change many of the actual circumstances.

That may be useful advice, but it is not absolutely necessary. It turns out that many fine authors here have very little personal experience. There are many more aspects of a spanking story than the physical experience.

I would also like to second Rollin's remarks which cover things I forgot. I can never get a story going before I have found it's "voice", i.e. the way it is going to be told. This is as important in a third person narrative as in one told in first person.

I know that many disapprove of "head hopping." But I often use the third person omniscient POV to explore the thoughts of both the spanker and spankee. It's a matter of opinion and depends on the situation. Sometimes I like to hide one character's knowledge from readers in order to spring a surprise at the end. But I think it often makes it more meaningful to consider all the feelings and emotions in play from both sides.
So even if it's not considered proper technique (especially since I'm an amateur and not trying to earn a living from it), I will continue to write from the point of view that I think I'd enjoy more if I was the reader.

My point is a very fine author with wonderful writing skills and a great imagination can write a good story with a spanking in it. If the story attempts to deal with what Patty was asking (then inside thoughts of those involved) and the writer has no experience in that area, that part of the story will not ring true. Think of spanking like sushi. You know what it is and what it's made from, and based on one's knowledge of fish, most people assume sushi is going to be slimy, oily, chewy and fishy. Ask 10 people and they'll probably imagine it quite similarly. But, in fact, that it not what it actually tastes like.

I spend a lot of time on DD blogs, and what I have learned is that people interested in a DD lifestyle will go in wanting it and assuming it is going to feel a certain way....both from a Top and bottom perspective. And they they do it, and they are surprised by certain things. Now what makes this point important is that those "surprises" are usually quite similar among those people.

My point is that one can imagine what it's like to give or receive a punishment spanking, find that it's a bit different than they thought, but also find that the real experience is similar among peers. If someone tries to relate a spanking discovery that is only imagined, it will not ring true with someone who has been there. It will be like the 40-year-old virgin telling his companions about breasts feeling like a 'bag of sand'.

If life will truly not permit personal experience, my advice would be to mingle among real spankers on spanking blogs and listen and learn. Like research for any writing project.

Your point is well-taken. Some of us are writing only fantasy for others who have not had experience and only want to imagine it as they would like it to be. But I think there is room for that also. Fantasy can be a great escape when reality is sometimes disappointing.

I am not going to insist that real life experience doesn't count, but there are lots of things one can learn from talking to people, reading discriminantly (there are lots of bullshit out there), and imagining. Spanking scenes are a bit like sex scenes - you may have had thousands of intercourses, but finding the right way to describe one is still a nontrivial matter.

As for "head hopping", I don't think there are any general rules against it, but you have to know what you are doing, and you have to do it with sense and consistency. If the whole story is seen from his perspectice except two sentences in the middle of the spanking, the result will seem forced and artificial. And spankees who can see their own butt turn red during the spanking, should have been described as the acrobats they are!

Well, perhaps instead the room they're being spanked in should be described as having at least a couple of large mirrors. (It is an interesting experience to watch a mirror-image paddle repeatedly flattening your own bare behind right as you're feeling each stinging impact, not to mention viewing the mirrored rearward redness appear and steadily brighten.)

I'd venture that changing narrative focus from one character to another, even though staying within the third person (omniscient) point of view, is something that has to fit in with the 'natural flow' of a particular story.

I'd also suggest that there can be usefulness in switching personal perspectives within a first person approach, but it should be done carefully and in a manner that enhances the story--such as contrasting the feelings of the prospective spanker and spankee while a chastisement is impending.

Shifting from the first person point of view to the third person, or vice-versa, that's tricky and can easily end up being confusing to a reader... --C.K.

Well, all I can say is that I've been dinged by editors who found abrupt POV shifts to be confusing and something to be avoided. Nowadays I use a scene break to indicate that now we're looking at the scene from another POV, and that's fine unless you start popping back and forth like it's ping pong. In fact it's very effective in a spanking scene involving the two main characters. What does she feel? What is he thinking? As long as it's clear who owns the scene for the moment, it's ok.

As far as experience goes, it's probably useful to have some, lol. Witness the lady who wrote 50SOG without knowing a thing about BDSM. OOPs, she did make a few million though, right?